This is Miti – one of the GTC fellows this semester. I am a
7th year in the History Department. As the year of my studies at
Yale may indicate to you, I am on the job market. This is my second time around
on that particular carousel. Teaching figures heavily in my applications this
year, as well as last year. All the positions on my color-coded job-spreadsheet
involve teaching. As last year, the vast majority ask for a teaching statement.
It seems like more applications call for a teaching statement than a sample of my
research.
What, then, is a teaching statement, this vital document? Let us do what most students do: turn to the Web!
Princeton’s Center for Teaching & Learning explains:
A teaching statement is a 1-2 page single-spaced essay that explains
your teaching strategies and goals and in the terms of your discipline and in
the context of the teaching positions you have held and seek to hold.
Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching makes is a bit more personal:
is a purposeful and reflective essay about the author’s teaching
beliefs and practices. It is an individual narrative that includes not only
one’s beliefs about the teaching and learning process, but also concrete
examples of the ways in which he or she enacts these beliefs in the classroom.
At its best, a Teaching Statement gives a
clear and unique portrait of the author as a teacher, avoiding generic or empty
philosophical statements about teaching.
Great! However, what is it in practice for me, as I prepare
for the job market – or the Certificate
in College Teaching Preparation here at Yale? Looking back over my
double-digit number of drafts (counting only the ones that I thought were final
at some point), the one hard and fast thing I can say is, that the teaching
statement is the single most difficult text I have ever written. After all,
this is
the document that will give a
hiring committee an idea of me as a teacher – something the positions I have
applied for, am applying for, and will apply for put a lot of emphasis on. That
is a lot to put into two legible pages: explain my teaching strategies and
goals, an individual narrative that avoids generic and empty platitudes, how I
am in the classroom.
Yet, the teaching statement is exactly the document that
gives the hiring committee the best glimpse of me as a person – as a potential
colleague. It is two pages of me in a
pile of hundreds of pages of hopeful and competitive applications.
Imagine it, December 2012…
A professor is sitting in a lit office – it is dark outside.
Maybe it is snowing. Final papers will be due and students are e-mailing
panic-struck messages and contesting midterm grades. The editors for the
professor’s newest book are asking for changes (about image reproductions rights
no less!) and a committee the professor is on had a meeting that ran late.
Again. The coffee ran out. Again. In addition, she or he has a pile as high as
the Eiffel Tower is tall of job applications. The massive pile has been culled
once based on completeness of application (not all three letters of application
have come in? Discarded.); formal requirements (only one chapter of the
dissertation is completed? Discarded.); cover letter (applicant’s research and
teaching interests do not jive with the department’s needs? Discarded.)
The professor reaches for the application on top, and flips
to the teaching statement. She or he begins to read.
Is that my teaching statement the poor coffee-deprived
faculty member is reading? Is my first sentence captivating enough to keep the
professor reading to the end? Will he or she be able to imagine me in a
classroom? Will I be likeable in those two pages? In addition, above all, will
my teaching statement help me get the job? That is how important this document
can be. It may not be, but that is how I have written mine, and considering the
emphasis on teaching in so many of the History jobs announced I do not think it
is unfounded. In addition, in my one, single job interview last cycle, this was
the focal point of the interview.
We are trained in academic writing. For the last six years,
I have worked hard to eliminate my personality, my voice, from my writing. Yet
now I am asked to expose my teaching personality, me in the classroom, to a
random stranger who really just wants the Eiffel Tower pile of applications to
magically disappear.
How do I write that statement, being read in a far-away
office? This is an essay: introduction, body, and conclusion. This is
thesis-driven paper: the thesis is that I am a great, dedicated teacher. The
teaching statement is there to provide evidence. The best way to expose Miti
the teacher (I distill from workshops, reading obsessively online, and from
feedback from colleagues and GTC staff) is to use concrete examples: Teaching
goal – challenge in the classroom – action teacher/you took – student response.
The statement is more than an expose of a teacher; it is also a writing sample.
Clarity, structure, and style are important to the document.
There is no one, tested and true, way to write a teaching statement.
However, there are many great resources out there. The Internet is filled with
useful resources – you can easily waste a week surfing around looking at
different universities’ tips and sample collections
Apart from the links above, I have found The Professor Is In
an invaluable resource, especially her acidic post on the
eightpitfalls of the teaching statement.
Chronicle of
Higher Education of course has articles on the Teaching Statement:
Writing a teaching statement is very difficult. Do
not expect it to be easy. But there is help out there! Do not hesitate to ask professors, friends,
colleagues, and random strangers to read your Statement. The GTC is an
excellent resource. My statement has seen three dramatically different “master
versions”, two of which were made infinitely stronger than the previous ones,
thanks to conversations with GTC staff. Am I tooting our own horn, why yes I
am! Thank you for noticing.
For all of us writing our teaching statements –
keep your eye on the prize: the job that will let you continue to develop as an
academic researcher and teacher.
Here’s to hoping that when the caffeine deprived,
tired, and over-worked search committee comes to your teaching statement, he
will look up, stare off into the distance, and think “Wow! I could learn so
much from this applicant as a colleague and a teacher…” and then he or she
moves your application into the “Interview” pile.
